Lee and Kara's Happy ending
by Frakme
Summary: Kara comes back.


Disclaimer – I own nothing BSG related, I just borrow them for a while. Lee/Kara, romance, angst. T for language. Lee has a visitor.

Lee and Kara's Happy Ending

Approximately 40 years after the Landing on Earth 2.0

Another day ended. Lee sighed as he watched the sun sink below the horizon, a deep ache in his bones. It had sunk all too early, heralding another long winter's night. He gathered the fur cloak around himself more firmly gripping as tightly as he could with weak, arthritic hands, and sat on the seat his son Zak had carved for him a few summers ago.

He glanced over the landscape, seeing people dotted around the cooking fires, huddling for warmth and awaiting their evening meal, chatting about their day. The children who had not yet retired for the night were still running around chasing each other, in an effort to keep warm in the chill air.

They were lucky in this particular settlement that the weather was generally temperate but the winter did bring the cold weather on.

He smiled softly as he spotted his two grandsons, Will and Joey wrestling each other, under the watchful eye of Jenna, Zak's mother, the boys' grandmother. They had a brief relationship that ended amicably when she realised his heart would always belong to another.

Seeing the boys reminded him of how he and his brother Zak used to play together. It had been some time since he really thought of his brother, each day was busy enough to keep the memories at bay, which for him was a good thing. There were too many painful memories that were best left alone. Such coming across his father's body, lying across the cairn of his beloved Laura. Helo's death only a few years after landing, leaving Athena and their children bereft of their stalwart. And the most painful memory of all, of Kara suddenly disappearing off the face of the Earth, goodbyes unsaid.

Lee closed his eyes trying to will away the feeling of loss he still felt remembering how long he had been without her. All those lost chances, those mistakes and hateful words on both sides that conspired to keep them apart.

Suddenly he had the impression he was not alone. He opened his eyes and saw a woman standing before him, dressed in battle fatigues, scruffy blood hair blowing in the breeze, shit eating grin on her face.

"Starbuck?" He whispered, incredulously. He blinked, convinced she was a vision conjured up by a wistful old man's imagination.

"Hey, Apollo," she said, "Missed me?" Lee struggled out of his seat and reached out to touch her. He was convinced he had finally slipped into senility and would prove it by establishing her insubstantial. But his hand encountered rough fabric and soft skin as he caught her shoulder. He stumbled and she caught him by the arms and helped him back into his seat.

"Yeah, it's me Lee, the one and only." Her eyes narrowed as she took in his wizened and worn down body. "I guess it's been a while."

He glared up her furiously at her typical Starbuck understatement.

"You left me over 40 years ago." he retorted, "Without much of an explanation, except that claptrap that Baltar was spouting about angels, for frak's sake!"

"Well it turned out that bastard was right, Apollo. There really are angels." she smiled beatifically at him, then chuckled at his look of contemptuous disbelief.

She took his hand and hauled him onto his feet. Oddly, he didn't feel as tired and cold as he did earlier, as if the anger Kara had provoked had awakened a new energy in him. They walked away from the people around the fires. He noticed that they didn't seem to notice this impossible vision, but somehow it didn't seem to matter. Walking was also becoming easier and he was no longer troubled by his painful joints.

They walked along in silence, arm in arm up to the top of a hill that overlooked the settlement.

"They really did make it here, didn't they Lee?" Kara said, smiling softly. "We did it Lee, we frakking got them a home!"

"Not everyone made it though," Lee reminded her, "It's been a hard road still for all of us."

Looking over the settlement though he realised that it didn't matter. What mattered was the human race would go on, would survive. President Lampkin had been keeping careful count of the deaths and births that went on in this settlement, until he passed his duties on to someone younger. The deaths were regretted, yes but the births outstripped them. And there had been more Cylon and human interbreeding, perhaps in a couple more generation there would be no 'Cylon' and 'human', just people.

Lee smiled and squeezed Kara's hand.

"It's time to go, now" she said quietly. Tenderly, she kissed him on the lips.

Startled, Lee grabbed her. He couldn't lose her again. But she merely smiled at him.

"Not me, Apollo." she said as she hugged him back. "You. You're coming with me."

Down in the settlement, Zak noticed his father sitting very still outside his home. Something in the way he was staring made alarmed him, and he quickly made his way over. His heart sank as he realised his father wasn't breathing. There was the faintest smile on his face.

Zak gently closed his father's eyes, and commended his spirit to the gods.


End file.
